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Saturday, March 16, 2013

Courier Mail : Robert Pattinson far from Twilight filming new movie The Rover in Outback Australia

Robert Pattinson far from Twilight filming new movie The Rover in Outback Australia

Edward Cullen wouldn't last five minutes in the baking heat of Marree, a one-pub town 650km north of Adelaide.

But Robert Pattinson has channelled the physical discomfort of his seven-week, summer shoot in the middle of the Australian Outback into a character that he hopes will make an equally indelible impression as the Twilight vampire.

“It’s added lots to the performance – being covered in dirt, pouring sweat, with tons of flies around, you lose your inhibitions quite quickly,’’ the English star said on the set of his latest film, The Rover, in which he sports a crude, DIY haircut and badly-decayed teeth.

A neo-western set in a brutal, anarchic near-future, the $12 million film is director David Michod’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to the internationally-acclaimed Animal Kingdom.

Located at the intersection of the Oodnadatta and Birdsville Tracks, Marree, population 90, is about far from Hollywood as an actor can get.

“That’s good in some ways,’’ says Pattinson. “You definitely end up making a different movie. Being in the desert has a funny effect. It does change you in a way.”

Pattinson, whose on-again, off-again relationship with Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart has been a matter of much conjecture, admits the different time zones and lack of mobile phone reception have taken a toll on his private life.

“Yeah, it’s tough. But at the end of the day, it’s only two months.”

Filming on The Rover, which has spent time on location in Hammond, Quorn, Copley, and Leigh Creek, wrapped yesterday.

Pattinson said he was intending to take the next three weeks off, but confirmed his participation in three upcoming projects: Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert, with Naomi Watts and Jude Law; Maps to the Stars, a comedy directed by David Cronenberg (Cosmopolis), and Hold Onto Into Me, with Carey Mulligan.